Nesta's Love is Quiet
by peachtree3
Summary: Nesta's Love is Quiet: Nesta protects Cassian in battle Cassian's Love is Warm (1/3): Nesta's recovery in the Illyria and her developing relationship with Cassian Post- ACOFAS
1. Chapter 1

**Nesta's Love is Quiet**

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**Nesta's Love is Quiet: Nesta protects Cassian in battle**

**Inspired by "Comatose" by Sod Ven**

* * *

Nesta's love is quiet.

He has learned to hear it in the whisper of her presence and the echo of her footsteps along hardwood floors. He has learned to hear it through the grinds of coffee beans and the steam of water; through the clink of a cup she doesn't acknowledge she saves for him. Knows it is as sure as the hot liquid warming his soul every morning, never tiring of the taste on his tongue.

He has learned to hear it in the scoff of her lips as he tells her she needs to train, and she refuses. Stubborn to the very last breath she carries inside of herself. When Nesta does agree, he hears it in her cursed words, sees it in her rumpled clothing that clings to her sweaty skin. Later, he is proud to hear it in the arrows that fly past his body, as she aims at him pointedly, and tells him that next time she won't miss.

He sees it in her eyes, in the smirk of good-natured humor. In the satisfied look she carries when she catches someone watching her, a little girl or boy, a mother, or just someone else with enough rage to rattle the stars. Freedom looks good on Nesta, like a sturdy pair of flying leathers. She wears it with pride.

Cassian learns to hear it in the groan she makes at his antics, at his jokes that have never once been funny, but somehow make her eyes resemble the clouds he flies in. Her voice, once filled with derision and pain, becomes breathy laughter escaping her lips. She hits his arm and tells him he better stick to his day job and he feigns hurt at her words. When he picks her up and carries her to their home, he likes to pretend the threats she throws at him are playful teases, even if he knows she'll make do on her promises. She always does, after all.

It's in the way her eyes soften when he's frustrated, the subtle gesture of comfort from someone who knows what its like when the world has made them the enemy. The arms that wind themselves around him, and the scent of lavender when her head burrows into his neck. The shivers that run up his spine as her nose grazes his pulse, and makes his heart beat again, but faster and faster. It's funny, he thinks, that she tries to hide from him when she is the only one he truly sees. A beacon when his heart has found the shadows.

Her love is soft, even if that contradicts everything he has ever learned about her. There is nothing soft in her fury and firm grip. Nothing comforting in her sharp tongue that whips hellfire to the camp lords and the men who refuse to see her as anything but womanly parts and the price it would cost to tame her. To those who want to put her and them into a little box, wrapped neatly and tightly, that they can never escape from. Nesta's love is too large to be trapped in anything.

It is hidden like her very shadow or the magic that runs deep in her veins. Just like the anger she tries so hard to hide. But Cassian hears it and sees it all.

When the knife goes through her shoulder and his wings are spared the injury, Cassian hears her love in the thud of her body. Hears it in the soft moan of his name and the ringing in his ears. It erupts so suddenly that he can't hear anything else but fury. She is exhausted, and what little control of her power she has learned has erupted and left her with nothing.

He sets her gently to the ground, even if his whole being fights against leaving her. A vicious rage courses through him. Cassian makes the soldier suffer, a slaughter that leaves blood on his clothes. He is not sure which is Nesta's and which is the body left for the ground to feed on, but he pledges for worse as the arrows fly past him, grazing his armor. The many lives he takes, the many men he shoots down is not enough to stomp out the fire he contains.

Only a moment later, mere minutes turned to eternity, Cassian clutches Nesta to him, his body gladly becoming a shield to keep her safe. Those wings she protects flies her home, and by some mother or cauldron or star he is not hit once while they escape.

He is a worrier, always has been where Nesta is concerned. Whether it was the day her head went under water, or the days she drowned her sorrows in alcohol and touch. He can never guarantee her happiness and still can't, though he tries. He just wants her to be okay—some person who can pick herself up when she falls so drastically. But Nesta is a hurricane. She sweeps everything into the whole of her, claiming nothing and no one is safe. He doesn't ask to tame her, to control her or wall her in, he merely wants to be the ground. Solid enough to grasp when she feels out of control.

It is no surprise of his own that he turns into a mother hen, a worried, irate bat at anyone who tries to take her out of his arms. Cassian must stop himself from ripping the healers to shreds at their incessant need to touch her. It is Mor who recognizes the ferocity in his eyes, opening the blankets on the bed for him. It happens in a whirlwind, and he half expects the world to be in disarray, the wind fighting the Earth for territory. He is surprised to see the sky is calm.

Her small frame, though stronger than the first day she left this house, is trembling, her skin pale and clammy. He wants to get her water or bandages or a blanket, but Nesta grabs his hand before he can move an inch towards a towel. He squeezes it and she holds on to the best of her ability. Her hair still smells like lavender, as he brushes it out of her face.

He doesn't care if the others are watching. He barely acknowledged them when they landed, only barked out commands to get the healers. Their voices, though hysterical, are not loud enough to distract him from the soft thump of her heart.

Cassian assumes they are noting the change, the way they grasp each other, as close as they can while the healers work. His friends are busybodies he knows, but the way Nesta's soft smile lights up her face makes the overwrought beast calm into a simple worry he can manage.

But then she closes her eyes and the panic sets in. He shakes her roughly and the healers grab his arms, he can hear Rhys and Az coming to help them. She makes no move to awaken and he fights them, everyone in the room and in the sky or down below. Anyone who wants to take her away from him he will fight.

The grip on her hand loosens and it slips out of his grasp, and some part of his soul feels torn apart. Ripped apart like his very own wings have been severed from his body.

"She's lost too much blood and she's used too much power, so her body won't heal by itself." They try to explain. It is lost in the pounding of his heart.

"The poison has entered her blood stream—"

"We're going to need more people. Everyone out."

He swears he hears her screaming, but her eyes remain closed, and they finally succeed in taking him away.

"Nesta. Nesta. Nesta." He chants, like a prayer. Asking her to open her eyes, to not give up, to not let the fire go out.

The wood splinters as the door is slammed shut, but it resists the beat of his fists. Magic never was his friend. Feyre asks him what happened, Elain is crying, Rhysand is holding it together, and there is blood all around him. He sees it even as he closes his eyes. Red walls, red faces, red wounds, and fire. Burning and burning and burning.

He has always heard Nesta, like the small voice that urged him on. Her heartbeat and her breathing following him like his own shadow, soft and comforting and warm. He hears nothing. Not their worry, not their reassurances, not even the healers muffled voices.

It's only then that Cassian finally learns that although Nesta would rather read than communicate, or rather do than say, and even if she hopes no one will hear her, Nesta has never been quiet in her entire life. Nesta's love is just too loud.

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**I actually wrote this a long time ago, but I forgot to upload it on to Fanfiction. Usually I update more on AO3 or tumblr, so check me out there vidalinav I'll try to remember to cross post on here. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Cassian's Love is Warm (Part 1/3)**

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**It will get fluffier as the fic progresses, but it's the start of Nesta's life in Illyria**

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Sometimes, Nesta dreams of war.

Her blankets and pillows are arrows and shields discarded along the ground. The monsters under her bed are men with axes and ruthless eyes. Blood-stained teeth grimacing in blood-covered skies, Death is the master of them all. He wields them like puppets, strings sewn into the sleeves of their armor. He makes them dance with a sword in their hands, forcing their eyes open when the bodies start piling.

When they plead for safety, Death laughs, tells them that he is helping. It's not their body lying on the ground. In her dreams, they scream for her. Or maybe, the wind does, calling out to the girl with grief tattooed on her arms. Surely, she will understand their pain.

Death hears their pleading with a playful smile, perfectly content with the mess he leaves behind. His face a portrait of greed and ecstasy.

She's never sure which side she's on. In her dreams, she is merely standing at the edge of the world, waiting for the end. Nesta watches as lines of blue and green mold into burnt oranges and reds. She isn't far enough to stop the spray of blood that hits her face.

All screams sound the same when everyone is dying. Nesta thinks they sound a lot like her sisters.

Although the sound simplifies into low humming, she hears each and every one of their heartbeats as if it resides in her own chest. Thump after persistent thump. It doesn't matter which color they strap against their backs. In the end, it all turns to red. The world sun-bathed in roses.

When she wakes, Death sleeps on the pillow next to her. Like a lover, he trails kisses up her spine. His manic laughter swallows her screams as she pushes him away. Nesta runs as far as the door, protects herself in its bare wood, and clasps her eyes closed. He disappears in a wisp of smoke, while the shadows ask for her name.

Nesta supposes, she is already fae, they cannot steal a soul which does not have a soul. But Nesta thinks her soul is hiding. Just like her heart. Hiding somewhere between a cold winter night and a stack of wood that doesn't burn.

She thinks her soul is disguised as something akin to fire. The same fire that turns each soldier to ash, and each worry to dust. Each dream into another day, another hour, another minute gone by. The same light she holds on to when the darkness surrounds her. Her soul blazing so bright, it burns like bitter frost.

* * *

Nesta pretends their love is a game. Different than a war, but just as precarious.

She knows that when fae hide, they disguise themselves as beasts, and when her sisters hide, they disguise themselves in pretty words. Lyrical phrases that profess they only want the best for her. So, Nesta lies just like they do. Just like Feyre does, when she says that it's her own fault she let things get too far.

Her hands have bloody half-moons where her nails dig into her skin, but she says that she is just fine. Her magic haunts her even more than her dreams, but she tells them she sleeps enough.

She plays dress up with her feelings, like she's eight again with little sisters. She dresses her grief in wolf fur, puts red on harsh words…

But, the wolf skin turns out to be real and its bite is a little too rough. Its teeth sink into her arm, leaves wholes in her skin, trails and trails of grief left naked with fear. Nesta pretends it isn't there, but the pain doesn't go away and neither do the scars. It just becomes another game, that she wins by being silent.

When they kick her out, though, she can't lie anymore. Nesta is enraged. Not the kind that yells and screams and kicks, but the one that hides beneath her skin, waiting and very much alive. The nagging pain of a wolf's jaw that does not let go for anything.

Her routine is perfect. She takes only as little as she gives. Small glances for one-word greetings, rent for appearances. She crafts the mask of painted indifference, pretends that their invites mean nothing until they just stop inviting her and pretends it doesn't hurt when they do.

It isn't good enough for her happy family. They don't know that she sees a fearful little girl in her own reflection, and for them, she kills her with fists to the glass.

The little girl doesn't die, though, and maybe that's why she doesn't win that little game of theirs.

In another mirror she's there, in the reflection of wine in a glass bottle, in the polished metal of a door knob. She lies in a pool of her innocent blood, but her heart still beats. Beat by persistent beat. Nesta hears it ringing in her ears like screams.

Sometimes, she thinks Cassian can hear it, too, the pounding of a headache she can never get rid of. If he does, she might not just be crazy. But, then he looks away as blue passes hazel, or pretends just like she does, that he doesn't hear a sound. She chooses to indulge him just like all the others.

No, if Nesta looks shameful, covered in vomit and last week's clothes, it is because she isn't a good enough liar. Not good enough at dress up or playing house or pretending that she's fine. Just a portrait of someone her sister doesn't even want to hang on her wall.

Cassian says nothing to imply that he notices the enraged grief she stores in her lungs, or the fear she takes with her to that little cabin in the woods. Its foundation wedged between the mountains of Illyrian cries and her own, silent monsters that hide in the evergreen and the ones that hide under her bed.

She wonders if he hears the regret in every sloshy footstep as they make their way to the wooden door. Wonders if he cares about her at all, or just pretends to care, or wants to care, but can't. Their once promised time slipping through their fingers, perhaps, disappearing altogether when she can't stand even herself.

Though, Nesta wonders how Cassian can stand this house. It is too plain, too lonely for someone like him. Not for someone so… chaotic.

There's something cold about it.

A bitter frost sleeps in the living room, nestled deeply in the bare walls and the cracks in the dining room table. Every window is open, which is odd for someone exuding caution. They chip away any semblance of warmth.

The empty fireplace reminds them of their distaste for sympathy and like the snow outside, their presence leaves the house a structure of silent complicity. Like somehow, they are punishing each other by living here, and the house is making sure they suffer—promising, almost threatening, that the cold is more at home than they ever will be.

The door of her bedroom is both her menace and her solitude, and crossing its threshold is anything but matrimonial. Cassian gives her space when she steps inside, and Nesta half-expects to wake up in her old apartment to find this to be some alcohol-induced dream.

His looming body paints shadows on the naked wall. Along with the rest of the house, it's undecorated. Its wood panels and white sheets whispering that she does not belong.

Nesta is grateful for the house's words. The feeling is mutual…and familiar.

When she turns back to Cassian, he is messing with the wood left beside the fireplace and it is not a dream anymore. Not a nightmare or a hallucination or a numbness she can't get rid of. She isn't numb when she tells him no. Nesta feels the heat even as he looks at her curiously; he stokes the fire with every second he touches the match.

Nesta fights everything in herself not to call him a bastard or a prick or an ass or any other name she can associate with him and his family. Maybe he sees her rage, kicks at it slightly and patiently waits. Questions if its bite might sting much worse than the words she spews. But he steps away from the fireplace and doesn't touch the wood again.

She hears his cautious footsteps from across the room, watches as Cassian's eyes glaze over the picture window. Perhaps coming to the obvious conclusion that it's winter and cold. Her feverish skin hasn't looked, though. The temperature of the room rising even with the loss of a warm body.

When he returns, he is carrying a mountain of blankets, each a different color than the last. A cacophony of oddly shaped patterns and furs. He places each one on top of the other, lying them down on sheets that are far too thin for Illyrian winter. He is all hard lines and few words, but the crease in his brows warns her not to argue with him. She wants to anyway, just to see what it'd look like.

He asks her if she needs anything else and just like that the room is freezing.

His eyes hold no fury, only compassion and Nesta has to wonder what she looks like to make him look like that. Maybe she looks like she feels. A candle with no more wick to hold the flame, it all but blowing out when her sister tells her that she isn't wanted. She isn't good enough.

Her eyes burn, and the emotions well up in the corner of her eyes. Nesta finds that her body can't lie as well as her mouth. Words get stuck in her throat, harder to swallow as he looks at her from the bed with the colorful blankets. She clenches the tears in her fists and holds on as her chest tightens.

Cassian notices her slow-blinking eyes, her shaking fists, the way her head lulls at the sight of warmth. Perhaps, can tell that she has not been comforted for much of her adult life and maybe most of her childhood. Maybe she lures him with images of an injured fawn, maybe she looks at him with the eyes of a wolf. Dangerous only because she is scared and can see no threat past his body.

He walks slowly to her, lets her decide if she wants him to touch her. Nesta resists the urge to crumble into a ball and sob, but she makes no complaints as he gently grasps her shoulders. He folds the blankets back, easing her into the promised warmth.

It isn't dark outside, but he closes the curtains, and shuts the door quietly when he leaves.

They stare at each other before the door shuts completely, and Nesta demands to know where her anger went, if it would roar as loud if she wasn't half as cold or tired. But her fury isn't for him… so it doesn't matter if she feels it or not.

Nesta just hopes that, by tomorrow, the fire inside of her is still silent and burning.

Her anger, the only family she has left.

* * *

The clash of swords is brutal. The groans coming from the beaten make her sick. Nesta wants to go home, though she supposes she doesn't have one.

The men fight until they bleed, the same red as all the rest. They fight until they can barely stand and still they continue, wearing mud like clothing. She watches as they're pummeled into the dirt and are satisfied by it. The bruises somehow making it onto her own skin.

Perhaps she is a little too human for all of them, or maybe she is something else entirely. Her grief unrecognizable to the once human and the never human, and not even to the Illyrian, though they stare at her harshly. Like they are just as confused as Nesta about who she is.

Nesta decides she hates them all, the same hate that rages against her own body.

Not because they are at a clear disadvantage in their current state of politics. Not because the women have no rights and the men have no voices. Not because she is caged with them, trapped on a spinning wheel with the rest of the world and the choices they couldn't make for themselves.

She decides she hates them for the stories they don't tell. A lover of knowledge values truth above all else, and each wound is a lie. When they stare at her, their eyes scream. Each man and each woman scream, and Nesta is one of them, because she can hear them all.

The silence is their enemy. Worse than death's preternatural wink. It threatens them like the promise of war.

Cassian may train them to fight monsters, but he doesn't teach them how to fight the ones inside of them. The ones that fear cages more than the death it consumes. One day, they'll all explode. All the rage they keep inside themselves will come hurtling out and they will hurt the ones they love the most.

The cauldron may have created magic, but it will not stop them from pillaging it. Like her dreams, they fight without rest or lie there with no choice. She thinks they've forgotten they've been born with wings. Not the ones straggling about like living appendages, but the ones hidden deep in their souls, that call out for freedom and flight, and possibility.

But they look at her, like she looks at them, like she looks at herself, like she looks at that little girl.

Maybe she is not the only one trapped in a war that will never end.

* * *

Cassian leaves for three days. She tracks each minute by the amount of times she looks out the window or opens the door. Every small noise sounding like Cassian's heavy footsteps moving with the full weight of his armor. Nesta can't say he's ever been quiet.

The house stays silent, bare, and empty. The house so empty that the silence echoes and so do her thoughts. Her mind fills with 1000 pages of worry and 200 more of blame. Of words she can't remember and words she wishes she could forget, all the reasons she did this to herself splayed out in paragraphs.

She reads each book with an eye to the door. Paces the living room long enough to number the exact amount of cracks in the wood, or the six different shades of grey in the worn rug she leaves trails against. The one she turns her nose to when Cassian asks her to sit next to him. Every shade reminding her of every reason she's incapable of love or compassion.

The way she scorns him is the reason why he isn't here or why her sisters don't want her.

She understands why the shadows ask for her name. She is not Nesta. Her name is bitterness or fury or ugly hatred. They want to know what to call her, because they can't call her beautiful or lovely or soft. They can't call her an Archeron when her family doesn't want her.

They can't call her anything. Maybe, that's why they all leave. Even Cassian giving up on her melancholy woes, when she refuses to stop dancing in its rain. The house blurring in weary blue with every question no one answers.

She doesn't even notice him enter the room. With the closing of a door, the house is bathed in indigo.

Nesta is quiet the entire time he goes to the kitchen, as he takes out bread. Plans her words carefully as he slices meat, waits for his explanation while he piles it together, controls her breathing as he lays it on the plate she wants to grab from his hands and smash on the wall.

He sits at the table with the cracks that she has counted 86 times and says nothing. Nesta counts every shade of control, forcing the words out when all she sees is burnt oranges and red.

"Where did you go?"

He flicks his eyes up to meet hers, dismisses the question like he dismisses her feelings.

"Have you eaten today?"

Her eyes sting and she thinks he can see past her wide, blood-shot eyes, but all he sees is the fire. All she can see is flames.

"Where did you go?" She spits.

Hazel moves from blue to white, perhaps coming to the obvious conclusion that its winter and cold. He gets up, moves the plate to the sink, and walks past her question.

"Velaris." He goes to the fireplace and the weary blues drop in her stomach. "Have you eaten, today?

"Why?" She gasps, not even sure what she is asking. If its towards his indifference or his incessant need to know if she's eating. Like he cares at all about her or well-being.

Cassian looks at her as he grabs the match, strikes it against cold, grey stone. Watches her as if he knows she can't stand him or what he is doing to her. He lights the match anyways, even as angry tears well up in her eyes. His eyes as bare as his walls, and just as cruel as the shadows he paints. He raises mocking eyebrow at her clenched fists.

"To give reports. Have you eaten?"

She nods her head and asks another, entranced by dancing color along his ugly face. At the crackling, she closes her eyes and breathes the bitter words. "Reports about what?"

"Just training." Casual. Nonchalant and aggravating.

She hears the fire roar, words and intentions blurring into background noise, shadowed by bones and fear.

"That's it?" She whispers, tired.

"Why are you asking, Nesta?"

She hears his wings, her father's neck, her sisters' innocence, her hope. All broken, lying dead as the blood pools from the bricks. Sees the murder of her love in the foundation of wood.

"Is that it?" She asks, dazed.

"Why don't you say what you really want to say, Nesta?"

The fire laughs at her, mocks her, shames her. Leaves limp bodies out for her to see, for every last bit of her and her incessant need to want. Calls her ugly, unloved, and unwanted as she sees his head sever from his body. Nesta wonders what lies he spouts to her sisters.

"Is that it?" She says quietly.

"Yes." He promises.

The fire roars louder, drowns her in its flames. Nesta bathes in it, soaks it into her skin, its red crawling up her chest until it reaches her face. Her hatred burns, it rips, and it roars, and it wants to tear her apart to get out of her body. It spits out of her mouth instead, and she burns them both to save herself.

"We're both liars then."

* * *

Nesta trails her fingers along crystalline fabric, the same color of the veins on her pale skin. Like branches they trail up her arms, blooming outwards when they reach the top of her wrists. A book sleeping steadily in her hands.

In the twilight, Nesta grasps each word as if they are stars and they pool around her. They make wishes come true as she catches them. Through the window, she sees the ardent embrace of a woman and her lover, watches as they dance on top of the snow and mud, through trees and fading dark. Their voices careening into each other, writing their harmony on each page.

The two do not stop as the book ends. They merely begin as someone else.

When she opens the door to her room, another book is nestled on the ground. A slumbering dragon that spews promises instead of fire.

Today, the dragon is green. Yesterday, it was purple. Tomorrow, it might be as red as his siphon's glow. Like yesterday, she cradles it gently, scratches behind its ears, and lets it tell its story. The couple once again beginning their sacred dance.

The chair is soft, the window in her room is wide. Along with the woman and her lover, the words fly off like a green dragon into promised light. The book never ending, even as she reaches the last page.

* * *

Cassian is a creature of routine. Every day as the sun washes the world in subtle light, Cassian rises. A beast ready for war, training, and dutiful vengeance. She is forced to hear the sharp whistle of steam and the grinding of coffee beans every morning. Mother forbid he leave without drinking a cup.

If she is looking for any reason to hate him, she doesn't have to go too far. The amount of noise Cassian manages to make gives Nesta a headache. His addiction to sweetened dirt wrenching her from the little sleep she manages to get.

She isn't sure when the noise stops being the villain she needs to best. The sounds becoming a constant reminder that someone is here in this house with her. That she is not alone. After weeks and weeks, the whistling kettle sounds more like bells that wake her from nightmares than screeching demons.

But, sometimes Cassian sleeps. The house holding its breath as to not make a sound.

The first time it happens, Nesta thinks that her body must know the world is ending, because she still wakes up at sunrise. Waiting for his presence of muffled screams as he bumps into tables and his silent curses as he tries to be quiet but fails. The part of her that worries for him, the part she ignores frequently, silences at the soft snores she hears as she listens through the door.

Nesta can't say why she starts, only knows that even the birds are silent outside. Almost as if they know he gets as little sleep as she does. It is the books that are left outside her door every morning that have her padding through the living room. Softly, so her footsteps can't be recognized by his light sleeping habits.

Cassian never acknowledges that he leaves the books there, doesn't hint that he knows she had wanted them since the first day, and was too afraid to ask.

She takes down the grinder, for those books, and tries with all her might not to gag at the smell. Nesta fills the kettle in water, watches it turn to steam and lifts it off the stove just before it whistles. She counts the number of drips it takes to fill the cup, the one she knows Mor had given him eons ago.

When her actions begin to settle, and the doubt wells up inside of her, she tells herself she makes it out of spite, the feeling warming her hands with the heat of the cup. Nesta thinks she'll spit in it, just to be safe, just to remind herself where they stand in the grand scheme of her agony. She doesn't, the idea too juvenile even to her.

When she hears his rustling, she panics. Nesta places the cup down, runs quickly to her room, and closes the door behind her. Any evidence of her existence gone, except for the steaming cup of surrender. If he asks, she'll deny it.

He never does.

At first, she is afraid he won't drink it. The anger that alights in her at the thought, makes her want to go back out and smash the glass. But, when she sees the newly cleaned cup in the cabinet, hanging upside down by a nail, she knows. The satisfaction is enough to make her do it again the next time he sleeps in, as rare as that might be.

The coffee is a truce, for him and for her. As long as they are going to be stuck in the same small cabin, breathing the same wild air, she'll be civil. She'll try—whatever that means to them, to her. She'll try for her sisters, for her life after, for him.

Because, Nesta finds that the warmth of fresh coffee is a more pleasant feeling than the burning flames of her regret.

* * *

**I'm working on the second part. It's almost finished, I'm just a horrible perfectionist and nothing ever sounds right to me. So that should be coming up eventually. Cross-posted on tumblr and AO3. Hope you like it!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Cassian's Love is Warm (2/3)**

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**Summary: Nesta's recovery in the Illyria and her developing relationship with Cassian (a continuation)**

**AN: I'm back for right now. Sorry for typos or tense issues, I was wayyy over it and I want to move on. **

* * *

Cassian once tells her that she wears a million different expressions. That they change as fast as lightning strikes, and he categorizes each one by name.

He says that he knows at least twenty-five expressions for when she's angry. _Fifteen_ when she's concerned. He knows that when Nesta's nervous she bites the inside of her cheek, and when she's infuriated, he can see the insults trapped behind her teeth, ready to roll out of her in fury.

When she's angry, Cassian swears he sees cracks of lightning beneath the grey. Quick and sharp and dangerous. Because _when she's angry_, Nesta is more than an oncoming storm. She is rage—so all-consuming he doesn't know whether she's akin to wind and rain or fire and ice…

When she's _happy_, though—

Cassian doesn't finish his spiel. Instead he looks at Nesta, his eyes brightening to shades of rich honey. His expression growing fonder, even as she narrows her eyes and clenches her teeth.

Nesta wonders if he'll grow fond of the burning expression she gives him, and its close resemblance to hellfire and flames. Ponders if she has met any male who likes to be burned as much as Cassian.

They're having dinner when he says these things. A normal, routine dinner, with plates of food in the middle of the table. A dozen different kinds that Nesta will not touch if only to see the vein in Cassian's temple pulse. Just a little.

She swears she can see his intentions through the steam. The smell coats all of his pretty words. Reminds her that she is supposed to swallow them. Let the words fill her. Nesta only contemplates them. Chews them slowly, washes them down with wine to see if they will taste less bitter.

He isn't finished. Not with his speech and certainly not with her.

No—Cassian piles each word down like he does the food on her plate. So high that all she can think of are mountain tops and the inevitability of collapse.

_But when she's happy, truly happy_—

"Your eyes smile." Cassian shakes his head in disbelief, as if even the idea is too much to imagine. "Never your mouth or maybe sometimes, just a small tilt. But your eyes—"

He leans forward as she reads him like one of her many books. His gaze searching her own, telling her to run because he knows too much.

"It doesn't matter if you don't want to tell me anything…"

Nesta wonders if he can tell how much her eyes sting, if they look as red as they feel. As red as battle wounds and shredded wings and anger. Wonders what he finds hidden in the depths of grey.

As his lips turn upwards, she thinks he sees death.

"I can still see you."

At first, Nesta doesn't respond to him. The minutes ticking on and on, dissipating into the air like the disappearing steam. Perhaps, time will calm her. Tell her that he isn't trying to break her open with hammers and pretty thoughts, isn't trying to light a match in hopes that she'll explode.

Nesta doesn't give him the satisfaction. Instead, she sets her fork down, the heady clank harsh and deafening. Lets the noise ring in her ears, just a little.

She can't say what the noise whispers to her. She can only tell it isn't angry, that it doesn't wish to harm in its pursuit of liberation. It only wishes to climb down her throat, crawl into her ears, take the shape of her body, look with her own eyes and see what she sees.

The noise—the being—isn't sadness or pity or shame. It doesn't yell like anger. But… it isn't quiet.

It is hollow…and it echoes…and it squirms.

Nesta knows why he says those words.

So, they'll burrow into her like a worm that is hungry and insatiable. Make a home at the core of her. Ripe and ready to consume. Because her home is a bitter apple that is half-rotten and chewed and she had been thrown away long before anyone had looked at her flesh and counted all the bruises.

When he says those words, he wants to get under her skin. Wants the words to mix with the steam of the casserole and the smell of chicken, so that tomorrow when she thinks of dinner—and the next day when the time arrives—she'll remember how he sees her. That she cannot hide from him. That she cannot hide from anyone when it is written so plainly on her face.

Nesta stands from her chair, the handle of the fork imprinted on her palm. She doesn't remember ever picking it up again, but it bends in her fist. Cassian doesn't make her stay, and something about it drives her mad. Has her calling for the moon with the skin of her palms. A prayer to fury and chaos and storm.

His words make her nauseous, and the food makes her nauseous, and Cassian makes her nauseous, too. The bile rising up her throat, sitting there, and waiting. She swallows it down, feels the words settle in the pit of her stomach and churn.

Nesta goes to her room. Settles at the foot of the locked door, claws at the braid of her hair where it pulls and pulls and pulls.

She remembers how the tears feel. Tiny touches trailing down her skin, embracing her cheek. A lover's touch from a lover who will never get to touch her. That she will not let touch her. Not now.

She doesn't wipe them away. They are all she has. All she owns.

The door creaks as she leans against it, as she bumps her head softly against the wood. Nesta stares into the room, her eyes never trailing away from the window and the snow slowly falling outside.

In the end, she's the victor. Sitting on the dirty floor with tears streaking her skin, her nails digging into her palms.

It's just another look Cassian will never name, or see, or memorize. Just another treasure that she gets to hide away. Bury so deep inside of herself that he will never find it.

Nesta still doesn't know if it makes her feel bitter or relieved.

* * *

Nesta never tells him that she knows his looks, too. That when she sees another one, she races to catch it, so she can stomp it beneath her shoe—even if she really just holds it close to her chest.

His looks are hardest to forget and no amount of staring at the wall will erase the brightness of his eyes, or the reds of his cheeks when they spew hateful words.

When he gets home, it is late. The day darkening to a deep shade of violet and lights, splattered stars in purple skies. Nesta thinks he looks like indigo. Like a fresh bruise blooming across her skin.

Through the window, she watches as he walks to the house, the way he trudges through the snow on worn boots. She can already picture the mud streaking across the dingy carpet, making x's on a treasure map of wool.

If it was yesterday, she'd be hidden away by now. If it was a week ago, she'd be protected by walls and denial. If it was an hour ago, Cassian would still be the enemy to her peace. The noise to her silence. But it isn't yesterday, or a week ago, or the hour that passed her by. It is now. A thunder of a heartbeat, the sound of crunching snow.

Nesta's ready… or ready enough to know she'll never be ready. And if she'll never be ready, she's sick of waiting for a day that will never come. So, Nesta waits for him. For his gaze that sees through her. For his expectations that Nesta's not sure she can ever fulfill.

Still…the more logical part of her brain wants to hide again, even as he's two feet away from the door. But, Nesta silences those thoughts. Squeezes them tightly in her fists, demands that her feet stay where they are. Even as Cassian's thundering footsteps start sounding like the beating of wings and war drums.

Nesta holds her breath, as the door slams into the hinge, feels herself brace for the inevitable. For the impact that will surely leave her bleeding. Because Cassian is not a soft breeze or a gentle wind chime, and he will not spare her in the onslaught.

His body barrels in, his hands tossing his coat on the rack, throwing his boots on the closet floor. He doesn't notice her, and she wonders if he is a forest fire. Unaware of how much his flames hurt as much as they healed.

She imagines him as Chaos walking, a storm that is not a storm, but resembles the universe twisting and turning until only destruction is left in its wake. A storm that has a name, that has hands, and feet, and teeth, and words, and who knows what it feels like to want to be destroyed.

He does not scare her, like ruination should. She can feel the heat radiating off of him, warming the house that had been left cold and desolate until his return.

Nesta thinks it's rather odd, the way his mere presence is comforting. The flush on the bridge of his nose, the color of his sweater. Every hue of heartbeats and second chances. She wonders if today is the day she gets to have hers, and if she'll take it. If she'll reach out, regardless if her limbs tremble, and take it from his outstretched hands.

But Nesta is not courageous. She will not ask for it and every moment that she contemplates carnage and construction, she loses a little bit of time and willpower. Cassian stands right there, in front of her, putting his weapons away, and she still can't say a word.

All Nesta can do is look around—for a broom or a pan, something that makes her look busy. Like she isn't waiting for him in a half-silent stupor. Something that makes her feel less vulnerable, less combustible. Something that makes her look like she isn't is a door left wide open, like she isn't a room with concrete walls that are cracked and broken. Like she isn't tumbling. Falling. Down and down an abyss, where no one can find her but him.

"Nesta?"

She looks up abruptly at the sound. A bell, a gong, a reminder that she is alive, even if she is barely breathing. A reminder that she has always been breathing. Nesta can see him scanning her face. A back and forth. Questions appearing in the color. Her eyes sting as she tries not to blink, hopes she'll disappear if she stands still enough.

Cassian's fists grip his hat. She didn't know he'd been wearing one, the fabric rumpled and beaten between his fingers.

He stares at her. Longer than she'd ever wanted someone to look at her. Longer than she's probably ever looked at herself. So long that time ceases to exist, and it is only now and forever and never again.

Nesta closes her eyes at the idiocy of it all. The nausea building up and up, that she doesn't get the chance to swallow—

"I left you cake on the table."

A moment passes before she opens her eyes again, bracing for an impact that never comes. Cassian looks toward the table. Like she's lying, and he's looking for proof. Nesta half-expects the plate to have disappeared altogether, in the span of mere blinks.

"It's there. Chocolate."

Nesta knows it's his favorite. She wants to deny that fact, but she knows. She knows too much.

Cassian walks to the table, touching the plate lightly with the tip of his thumb like it's some lamp with a djinn trapped inside. Nesta thinks she can hear music in the delicate touch.

He meets her gaze, and there's nothing harsh there. There is nothing so chaotic as when he walked through the front door. His eyes are calm, his stance wide and reassuring. She almost forgets he is supposed to be dangerous.

"Will you eat with me?"

Nesta wants to say no. To run and hide and run some more. To never look back and to never go back to a place she would never belong. She thinks she must be in the eye of it all—A storm, that she is trapped in… but safe in. There is nowhere to go.

Nesta only nods. A silent agreement. A plea to keep her safe. To not damage her in his pursuit of destruction.

Cassian leaves, and for a moment she can breathe again. She can hear the clinking of plates and glasses, imagines them all breaking before he can come back. But he does come back, with another plate and slice. He sets it right beside the one she's cut.

Nesta thinks they'll get lost in the silence, in the idea that time will stop if they don't look at each other. She wonders if he wants the moment to end, if he's waiting for her to run or coming up with excuses to leave or if, like her, he is _afraid_ the moment will end, all too soon, and they will once again have to continue this ridiculous dance of shy glances and heated words.

Cassian steals glances at her from the corner of his eye, and she has a strange impulse to pound her fist in the cake if only to see a different reaction.

But then, Cassian's eyes widen suddenly. He looks at the cake and looks back at her and looks at the cake again. And the look he tries not to give her, makes her stomach churn and bubble, an uncomfortable nausea once more settling in her chest. Her heart beats faster at his perusal and Nesta is reminded once more why she should be terrified.

Cassian picks up the new piece in a rush, the one he's cut, himself, setting it by the seat at the other end of the table. He merely points to the other.

"You can have that one." His voice is breathless, and uneven, and though he tries to appear nonchalant, his gestures are too unnatural to be normal.

"This one's bigger." He offers in clarification, as if that clarified anything. Nesta has half a mind to be offended by his behavior. But Cassian doesn't stop moving. Instead heading back towards the kitchen.

"Are you not eating with me?"

"Hold on." Cassian procures glasses from the cupboard and moves haphazardly to the refrigerator. When he closes the door, she can see him carrying a jug of milk. He's noticeably less anxious and tries to prove it to her by giving what he probably thinks is his most award-winning smile.

He pours each of them a cup and she can't help but admire the fact that he would use crystal wine glasses for something so simple.

"You can't have chocolate cake without milk." Cassian scoffs. "It's sacrilege."

Nesta tilts her head at his dramatic entry. From the milk to the words. Cassian is… not what she expected. Different from anyone she's ever met. And, though she knows he is trying to distract her from asking too many questions, she's too curious to not indulge him just this once.

"But any other cake is fine without it?"

Cassian sits down in a flourish. Drops of milk landing on the wood. He grabs a napkin to clean the spill between them. "Oh Nesta. Have you no idea?" His arms move in a wave, his voice dripping with mocking disdain. "Have you been sheltered away this long?"

She gives him a blank expression, a gesture to get on with it as any other. Cassian breaks off a piece a cake with the forks she'd set out but doesn't take a bite. Instead, waving it around while crumbs fall to the table.

"Every dessert should be paired with something complimentary." He points to the cake as if it's obvious. "It's how the world works. Chocolate cake with milk. Cookies with milk. But Vanilla cake? It's lighter, so of course you'd have to have a sauce—"

Nesta merely watches as he runs on his tangent. It's almost comical the way he forgets so quickly the last few awkward moments.

"Strawberry goes best, but I'm partial to blueberries. Pie, though, needs whipped cream… Though, I guess, it depends on the filling, because everyone knows that apple pie goes with ice-cream and not whipped—"

Nesta raises her hands in defeat. "Okay, okay. I get it." She shakes her head at this bizarre turn of events. "You know way too many desserts."

He squints at her accusingly, and a laugh bubbles up inside of her that she swallows with a bite.

"You know too little." He says, indignantly. This time she doesn't even try to stop the roll of her eyes.

She watches as he takes a quick bite, smiling softly at the sweet flavor. Nesta tries not to feel too pleased with herself. It is merely a cake, and he is only a person. Her heart should not beat for him**.**

When Cassian looks back up at her, for what might have been his thousandth time staring, he has that fond look again. The one she knows he tries to hide in between quick glances and shadows.

"Don't worry though, I'm sure I could introduce you to plenty you'll like."

"I look forward to it." Her lips turn upward, and she can't help herself. She can't hide from him. Nesta's not even sure she wants to. If second changes meant being destroyed, Nesta isn't sure she's unwilling. Not if the torment is this sweet.

She is self-inflicting, Nesta decides. She wants to be left with bruises and pain. Their wreckage is inevitable. Their ending preordained. Two storms cannot meet without beatings.

But they continue eating, and though she ends up shaking her head more than a million times, the dining room at least doesn't seem like a terrible place to be in, and she supposes…Cassian isn't the worst person to be trapped in a house with.

* * *

Cassian is a sore. His nonstop pestering follows her to the kitchen at breakfast, in the living room when he comes back for lunch, and in the dining room for dinner where she cannot possibly escape him.

She doesn't need training. Abhors even the thought of doing something she doesn't know the first thing about.

"Come on. Just try it once. Once." He holds up his pointer finger in emphasis. His eyes wide, his voice desperate.

She doesn't need training, and she tries to tell him this. That it will neither straighten her attitude nor turn her into one of them.

"I am not some warrior keen on traipsing through the forest for the first thing that wants to kill me."

It's more than that, though.

If not wanting to fight makes her weak to them, to fae, to her family, she'll let them call her that. Better than playing a role she has no desire nor skill to be in. Better than turning into another person she doesn't recognize.

Fighting won't make her new.

It doesn't matter if she's is in a spacious townhouse, a cabin in the Illyrian mountains, or a little hut in the middle of the woods. When she looks in the mirror, her own face makes her want to rip off her skin and piece it back together. Into something different and familiar.

Learning to fight won't put those pieces back together. Won't stop her from yearning for a past that she'd never wanted…or loved.

Fighting won't make her live.

Cassian keeps asking, though.

Every time she thinks they're done with the discussion, he brings her a new book and asks again. He gets in the habit of handing them to her. Another way that he sneaks into crevices of time and space she's been clear on calling her own.

Nesta lets him. Allows him to be there when she opens the door, when she puts the plates on the table, when she reads a book in the living room. Lets him in on her many secrets…or maybe just a few.

After the fiftieth time, she agrees. Not because of her inherent weakness by literature, but because she is thoroughly annoyed at the questions, at Cassian, at herself even, for letting him annoy her. If breaking sweat will get him to shut his mouth, she'll do practically anything.

Except training, Nesta learns, hurts. Her joints feel bruised and out of place, her bones grind against each other every time she moves. But it's her heart that hurts the most. Where her hands blister, her soul kneels—fists to the ground, head buried in dirt. It doesn't take much to be defeated, she thinks, it doesn't take much to kill her. She is somehow both relieved and infuriated.

Cassian looks on. He doesn't coddle her. His eyes sparkle challengingly. Smirks so indignantly, that the rage slams into her and she's on her feet once more. Kicking and fighting and breathing and very much alive.

She clenches her hands, feels the hard ridge of her knuckles. Reminds herself that she hates them. She hates them all, even herself. Hates everything about them.

She doesn't—but her fists don't know that.

* * *

Death is not a dream. Neither are the screams; they come from her.

Nesta wakes up to looming mountains. She can see them from her bedroom window. Illyrian mountains she imagines toppling over; the rock and snow piling on their little house. The roof strong enough to withstand winds and heavy rain, but not strong enough to protect them from stone—or the fear barely contained within her.

_Breathe, Nesta, _she thinks. Breathe until her heart knows what time it is. Breathe until her lungs know it's safe.

Her fear _is_ a mountain. Immovable, precarious, snow capped with feelings she could never melt away. Stagnant and piling.

"I can't."

The bleak is different when she sleeps. There is nowhere to run, no person to call out to, no day that will inevitably come with swords of golden sunbeams. The night is eternal.

In her nightmares, it surrounds her. When she wakes up, it waits.

A moon-shaped eye watches her from the window, sees her chest move like waves in the dark. Nesta hears the strangled noises. They don't come from her.

_Nesta, breathe._

Death is there, she thinks. Disguised as shadows on the wall. He faces her, makes her look. She sees his mouth move, but the words are coming from her.

"I can't!"

Nesta screams the words. Screams them so that she won't hear anything but her own voice. But the darkness is hollow. She can hear the words again and again.

"It's not real," she repeats, cradling her head in her hands. "It's not real."

_It is_. Her fear isn't a liar. It's there in the dark, in the mountains, in the eyes of the faceless Death who haunts her. It topples right on top of her, and Nesta cannot stop the yells…

But, then there's a knock… and just like that it's quiet.

Nesta knows who it is. She can hear his breathing through the door, can hear her heartbeat pound away with his fists on the wood. Low, but repetitive.

And just like that…Cassian's there.

A pleasant dream in a raging nightmare.

"Nesta. I heard noise." His feet shuffle back and forth. Step by step. A dance. She wants to dance with him. "I just was checking up on you."

His words are soft, though loud enough that she can hear him like her own voice. "Are you okay?"

He makes a _tsk_ sound, as if he knows that's a question, they've all been asking since she could remember. Nesta doesn't fault him for it. She won't respond with something so crass. The night has left her far too empty.

"I'm—" She wipes her eyes with the sleeves of her nightgown. Tries to hide her sniffles in the words. "I'm okay."

It's the first time she's ever said those words, and they are still not true. But Cassian doesn't disagree or argue that she isn't. Perhaps, he can hear something else in her lies. Something like a wish or a dream.

A hope.

For an eternity, they remain quiet. She is half afraid he will go away if she doesn't say anything, and that's the last thing she wants.

"I just had a nightmare." Nesta explains. Hesitantly, because admitting it to him is almost as hard as admitting it to herself. That the dreams come and go, and come again, and don't leave her alone.

She can practically hear his trepidation at the door. It's closed, but she swears the door watches her. Holds its breath. It wants to be opened; she thinks. It doesn't like playing the wall that stands between them.

"I just put the kettle on…and there's still some pie left." Nesta can hear the floor creak as he dances on the balls of his feet. "If you don't want to go back to sleep, we could… play a card game. Or something—If you want."

She can hear him muttering to himself, hears the words _stupid _and _idiot _as he waits for her response. Nesta doesn't give him one, instead shifting off the bed, a veil of rustling sheets trailing behind her. It takes her a moment to open the door, the time spent staring at the knob in hopes that it would sink into the wood.

It would be simpler to keep the door closed.

It would be simpler if they'd never said one word to each other.

She opens it anyways.

Cassian's hair is tangled, the left side of his face marked and red. He has both sides of the door frame locked in his grip, like he'd break the door down if she'd asked.

Nesta sighs, rubbing her eyes and her temples.

His lips raise slightly, something half-pitiful and half-understanding. His eyes filled with sleep and empathy.

Nesta wants him to hug her. It's an awful thought that she digests and dismisses, but he looks… warm, bright even. A stark contrast to the night that never leaves her.

He doesn't crowd around her, stepping away when she steps forward. Letting her decide what she wants out of this ordeal—how she wants to be comforted.

She clenches her fists, reigns in the torment and fear.

Nesta wants him to know, he has to know, that she is grateful to him. For him.

It isn't those words that come out of her lips. A croak of a question, a stupid question.

"Can we play pinochle?"

The grin he gives her is wide and triumphant. Never-ending, never-stopping.

"Of course." Cassian reaches his arm out, guides her back to the living, and in the direction of the living room. Nesta looks back into her room before she goes, stares at Death one more time in the shadows. Somewhere in the hidden darkness of the moon's glow.

Death—the night—is more frightening when she's alone. And she is not. No matter how many times she's tried to convince herself she is.

Nesta takes his cue, Cassian trailing beside her.

"I still won't go easy on you." He remarks, a haughty tone to his rough voice.

She looks back at him, the ferocity coming back once more. Awake and breathing. Watching and waiting. Ready to pummel and fight.

_"_Neither will I."

* * *

Cassian likes to watch her read. Sometimes walking past her room just to see if he'd catch a glimpse. Her head leaning on the cushion, mouthing the words to herself, pacing back and forth with her eyes glued to a page. He wants to know what she's reading, why it fascinates her so, that she spends most of her day huddled on a couch that is more worn than loved.

He never gets to ask and not because he doesn't have the opportunity. Nesta doesn't like to be intruded on is what he tell himself. Cassian should be happy with the glimpse. She's spent so many days with door glued shut, the crack should be a reprieve. A sliver of heaven. A soft light in the dim hallway.

He remembers making excuses, muttering to himself that he forgot his flying leathers, his hair tie, his gloves. Anything to get to his room, to pass her slightly opened door, even if his gloves were already on his hands. He remembers that glimpse, that light. A gifted piece of time.

Now, Cassian is lucky enough to have earned more. Words turned phrases, sentences he didn't need to reach for. Fragmented pages in a book he wanted so badly to read. One page at a time. One she writes herself. One she lets him hold. That he doesn't have to steal by catching stars.

Cassian will not take those moments for granted. He will not push her off the cliff she paces along, will not let her fall off of it. Cassian will read every page she gives him, memorize each sentence like his own soul had spoken. Each word a treasure. Each word a hope.

So, Cassian stays near the doorway when he wants to speak to her. Doesn't cross the threshold until she lifts her head and sits up along the fading blue fabric. Even then, he doesn't move an inch.

"I think this place looks plain. Don't you think?"

Nesta sits with a book in her lap. His eyes roam over the cover. An old one, he thinks, not the one he'd given her this morning. She puts her head under her chin and just that look alone makes him giddy. Too excited for a simple question, for just a glimpse.

Cassian is reminded of that light again, that sliver of a doorway. Nesta doesn't leave the door closed anymore, doesn't leave it cracked. She looks at him head on, doesn't shy away or hold her nose higher than the tallest shelf in her room. She doesn't turn away from him. She is as open as the door, as bright as the light from the window.

Everything inside, though, is a secret. Cassian may get to see inside, but he does not get to step inside. Not yet.

He almost forgets he asked her a question, the sound of her voice shaking him out of his contemplation.

"It's your house. If you don't like it, no one else will."

"That's what I'm saying." His smile grows wider as her eyes blink lightly. He tries to make himself seem smaller, tilts his head and shrugs. Like he's innocent. New. Peaceful. Unchaotic. Cassian wonders if it's a look he is pulling off. If he ever could to begin with. "I think this place needs some character."

"And?" She scoffs. "Decorating tips are not really my forte. That's reserved more for your high lord."

Cassian has to resist reaching for his neck or playing with the pieces of hair that keeps falling in his face.

She watches him with those analyzing eyes of hers and he wants to tell her that she'd make a good strategist for how well she knew which place to attack. But he makes a good show of being unbothered, standing taller, stretching his wings until one hits the wall. He gives her his Cassian smile, the one he's sure will goad her.

"Opulence isn't my thing." He gestures around him as if it's obvious. The wallpaper that's stripped in places on the wall, the quilts that don't match, but are folded neatly on the bed. The eye of the window, watching as he flopped, sneering at the disarray, staring at the seat and only bookshelf that didn't even have enough room to hold all the books that belong to her. The rest sitting in piles next to the wood.

"I was thinking… since you live here now—" He holds his hands up. "—at least for the time being, we should make this house more comfortable for the both of us."

With a subtle laugh, he continues. "Besides, it looks like you could use more bookshelves."

He expects her to laugh. He doesn't know why, but he expects her to lift her fine-groomed brows and laugh as if he was no one important enough to bother with. That he is merely a nuisance and an obligation to her time in Illyria, that she cannot escape him so she must adapt until she can leave.

Cassian is surprised when she doesn't outright dismiss him.

"How?"

"There's this market. They have prints and fabrics and shelving." She furrows her eyebrows as he pauses and takes a breath, hoping that if she was going to reject him or yell she'd get on with it already. "They also sell decorations, handcrafted art. Food even, so we could get that too on our way back."

Nesta doesn't respond right away. She merely stares at him; another look he files away. Under "I don't know what Cassian's getting at" or… "Cassian has grown two head and I wonder if he's gone insane."

"You want me to go to the market with you, and help you decorate?"

He braces himself for the impact. "Yes… I want that."

Maybe Nesta is reading one of her favorite books, or she got a full night's sleep, or she liked the weather today, but she nods. Cassian has to blink twice to see if it's true and he isn't making it up in delusional hope.

"We'll have to figure out how to bring everything home, and we should probably make a list before we go… but I guess I could finish this book some other time."

Nesta meets him by the doorway, and he walks with her to the living room. His wings flaring as she rushes past him. Cassian wonders if she notices the how his cheeks flush red at the mention of _home._ His whole body growing fonder and softer and more pliant. She looks back at him and waits at the end of hallway until he catches up.

His cheeks strain from the grin plastered on his face, and for once in his life this house could be his home.

* * *

Elain writes her every Sunday.

Like clockwork, the letters pile into ink and printed paper, collecting dust in the small drawer of her nightstand. Some of them she opens, most of them she doesn't.

She learns to read each word in between lines of freesia and Iris. Between stories of misadventures and fake laughs. Reads each letter like one of the books Cassian hands her every morning, every letter as fictious as the last.

The first one starts with a _how are you_. The second, _we miss you_. The third, _we wish you were here. _The fourth, _it's not the same without you_. A firm _you were killing yourself and we couldn't watch. _An implied _it is your fault. You did this. We're doing this for you._

Nesta stops reading them after the 12th Sunday. The pile turning into unopen envelopes.

When Cassian hands her the 37th, it is from Feyre. She contemplates if her sister's handwriting will still look neat on crumpled paper. She sets it on the table, before her fists can make the decision for her.

If Feyre writes it's because Elain has told her she isn't writing back. Like a good hound, she goes sniffing about. Like a good sister, she makes sure Elain is satisfied.

"I think your sisters miss you."

"So, they've said."

"I could bring them back a letter if you want." Nesta knows this already, implying that she doesn't and asking again isn't going to make her write them.

Cassian merely stares indefinitely at the letter on the table, pauses as if to say something she doesn't want to hear, and won't even deign to imagine. They both get lost in unknown words. Unanswered questions. Silence that screams even louder than her own voice.

She takes the letter with her when she goes back into her room. Closes the door so softly, afraid that she'll show him her pain by even the slightest sound.

Today, the door does not whisper her secrets.

Instead it watches her keenly, watches like everyone does. She heads towards the mattress, lifts it until she sees the others. Piles of letters. Pinks, yellows, and pale greens. Signs of spring when not even the winter has passed.

Nesta never tells him she's written them, doesn't even tell her shadows. Only the door knows. A sliver of silver in a garden of patience, where winter meets spring.

The letters she writes are not closed. The flap of the envelope waves her hello, the words do not say anything. She knows they'd call her coward if she wasn't in the room.

Nesta can't argue against her own words, can't convince the letters to explain on her behalf, to tell her sisters what she means—what she feels.

She can only look them over, move around sentences, change parts, remove others. Write and rewrite and write again. Piles of crumbled paper resembling snow.

Nesta can make the words lie.

But she can't make them tell the truth.

* * *

Cassian stretches his wings, a halo of orange and sinew appearing in the horizon, stretching so far Nesta imagines them reaching out like hands towards each end of the universe. He looks both holy and obscene under the setting sun and though his image and the sun are too harsh for her eyes, she does not look away.

Nesta has to resist rolling her eyes. If he means to look impressive, he should do it in front of females who don't already know what an impressive pair of wings look like—as if they don't have some of their own. As if he is the only one who can be both dangerous and god-like.

Cassian is going over the best ways to use a long sword. The Illyrian blade gleaming where he holds it, revealing all of their flaw and inadequacies. The metal more intimidating than most of the men in the camp. Maybe more so than Cassian, himself, who swipes his hand across its spine. The touch soft. A whisper of a caress.

Nesta can't help but wonder what his hands would feel like, how gentle his fingertips would travel, how rough his palms would press against skin. If he'd be as soft with her as he is with something that was made to kill and maim and murder.

"The edge is virtually useless against armor," he says, "but that's not what it's made for. The objective is to hit the soft areas." He points to himself in example. _Armpit, neck, face, elbow,_ any area that looks good enough to bury into.

There are muffled responses from the other girls. Some young, some older. All of them naïve. Even herself. _What are they even doing with weapons?_

Cassian gestures for them to try, and Nesta picks up the sword. Balancing it in her palm.

The weight of her lies is lighter than she'd thought it be. She sweeps it across her and it cuts through the air, making x's by a trick of the light.

The feeling is odd, and many of the other girls must think so, too. They grimace at each other, scrunching their noses, curling their lips. Nesta supposes she'd do the same, if she'd had any one who'd look back at her.

She watches Cassian, as he breathes in deeply. A silent sigh that makes her lips turn slightly. He's frustrated, Nesta can tell, and though she doesn't wish him pain, she can't help but feel it's what he deserves.

He did this to himself. Cassian can't expect them to love something they have been raised to hate… or be responsible for something they had no obligation to, prior to now.

By the time Devlon arrives, Cassian looks ready to pull out his hair, watching and directing even when none of them will listen pass minimal effort.

His wings stretch even further, his gate asserting itself. She imagines him like a peacock, or a ruffled chicken, ready to brawl. The image makes Nesta want to laugh, but the look on his face tells her it isn't a fight she particularly wants to start.

When he looks at Devlon there is nothing nice or patient about him. He is all harsh lines and glares. Nesta understands why people would fear him and can't understand why Devlon couldn't be bothered.

Next to Devlon, Cassian looks like a boy. Strong and petulant and stubborn, but still not more experienced than his senior. She questions if this is Cassian's whole life, having to prove himself to beings who will never think highly of him.

Their camp lord stands there, doesn't even gesture for Cassian to follow. Perhaps, it's beneath him to do such things. Nesta has to resist throwing the sword at him for the insult.

"Just keep practicing, I'll be right back." He commands to all of them, subtly peering her way.

The look on Devlon's face says otherwise. Perhaps, the plan all along… or just a pleasant happenstance to his undermining nature. Nesta only nods at Cassian. She knows how these games work.

Cassian leaves, and at first, they continue. Swipe after swipe. Getting used to holding a weapon in their hands, as if they are not weapons themselves. Dangerous with or without a blade.

Nesta's surprised at the ease, the balance, the way the edge looks sharp enough to cut through her anger. It's make her furious how easy it is for her to become them; how easy it is to forget.

But after an hour, it's nearly dinner, and the others start looking nervous. 12 of them. The oldest couldn't have been older than her, though she couldn't have been sure. They were after all fae. It's become increasingly obvious Cassian isn't returning anytime soon.

The nervous looks on some of the girls faces reminds her of Elain, and for a second, she wants to help, to alleviate their grief or guilt. She wants to solve all the world's problems, so they won't have to. It's a feeling she should stop herself from acting on, but it erupts out of her anyways.

"You can go home if you want. I won't tell." The females look at each other, heads turning, back and forth, their dark eyes hiding their worry. They look at her and Nesta thinks she can see contempt, and wonders what she did to cause such things.

It's the eldest who responds, a derisive tone coating her voice. "Why would you let us leave?"

It's a smart question. It's a question, she, herself, would ask. Nesta isn't their leader, their general, their Camp Lord. She is nothing and nobody to them, she is just as much controlled as they are. What gives her more power than them?

Regardless, the haughty tone coupled with her quick temper means the match is lit. It is only a matter of time before she burns all of their houses.

Nesta looks the eldest in the eye, her eyebrow raised, her lips set in a fine line. The monotony coats her voice, and even though she refrains from crossing her arms or clenching her fists, she has a feeling the tone of her words do it for her.

"Because I don't want to be here, so I'm assuming you don't either." The Illyrian's eyes darken, and Nesta wants to know her name, if only to use the information as leverage over her.

"You have no right to assume anything about us." Nesta holds in a scoff and a laugh. She must be standing in front of a mirror. She swears she said that once. "Our males are bred for war. Why should we not fight? Why should you get to and not us?"

Nesta tilts her head in confusion. _They were angry about her… training?_ Never in her life did she think anyone would be envious of that. She wanted to tell them that she'd gladly give them that honor if this conversation ended immediately.

"Am I lucky?"

Some of the girls nod. She can see the wrinkles between their eyes deepen, their cheeks sullen and red.

"You get to fight when you want to, to roam around this camp like one of us. What gives you the right to assume anything about us?"

It's the anger she recognizes. So very much like her own. Nesta wants to welcome it, to say hello to it, to tell it she knows who it belongs to. It looks just like the very one that spills out of her lips. "What makes you assume anything about me? That I want to fight, that I want to be here."

Again, it's the eldest who answers for all of them. Her black hair pulled tightly back from her face, so Nesta can see clearly how much hate shown in her eyes.

"You're all the same—trying to control us. Trying to pretend to be like us, to do our trainings, to talk to our people, to learn our ways, only to change them to be like you. You think you're not the same, look how fast you came to command us when you have not earned that respect. You are just like all of them. Shrouded by your ignorance."

"I am nothing like them." Nesta sneers. It's an assertion she makes many times to herself and it only seems to enrage her more. The statement isn't entirely accurate. Not anymore. Not when every day she looks in the mirror and sees less of herself and more of what Feyre and the rest of that Inner Circle wants her to be.

"You forget that I am also here out of obedience. That when my family looks at me, they see someone that disgusts them, so much that they sent me away because they couldn't stand the sight of me." Nesta has to resist blinking.

"If they are changing you, they are also changing me. Because they can't stand the sight of us. Can't—" she shakes her head, "Can't love us until were someone else."

For a moment, the training pavilion is silent. She wonders what new comment they will make that will feed the bitterness. Nesta marvels at how fast her anger dissipates. A bonfire one minute, a pile of ash the next. She used to be so warm, always ready to burn. Now, she is merely rubble.

Nesta doesn't look at them, merely watches her foot kick a rock until it hits the base of practice figure. Only when she hears shuffling, does she glance back up.

She is grateful that the harsh look on the eldest's face is still there. She doesn't know what she'd do if she saw pity. The female moves her head back and forth, as if she is weighing her options and finds that they're both unfavorable.

"We're going to help cook dinner. You might think it's beneath you, but it's what we do every day at sundown." She holds up her hands, "And you may say you are not like our leaders, but the judgment is still up in the air with that one, so I think I am allowed to make assumptions on your behalf. I might regret this invitation later… but you're welcome to come with us."

Nesta isn't sure why she agrees. She has never been a people person, never wanted to spend time with anyone outside of her home. But the promise of something new sparks her interest, a promise of company and food. But, more likely, Nesta thinks, she also wants to prove to them that she isn't like Feyre or Rhysand or Mor and even Cassian, sometimes. That she is as unwilling to change as she is willing to change anyone else. That she doesn't need them to feel whole.

Nesta wants to prove to _herself_ she isn't like them and wonders what parts of that circle she wants to omit and what parts she actually admires. If changing means pretending or changing means giving in. She questions if this is what she meant by being destroyed.

"Do you like fighting?" Margery asks, after the work is done. The eldest, she finally learns the name of.

Nesta sits with a bowl of soup in front of her, and she and the other girls are eating at a long table in the kitchen. They cook for a dining hall, Margery tells her, and after each dinner, they are free to eat whatever is left. Today the meal is a beef stew, and when Nesta had seen how many they were feeding her eyes had nearly widened to the size of the pot they were cooking with.

Nesta barely has the spoon to her mouth when she is bombarded with the question. One of the girls looks at another, and for the first time Nesta thinks that they are hiding something. She knows that look. The ways their eyes say much more than their mouths ever will, the way she can almost see their minds, like machinery, move and rotate and grind away.

"It's just a question." Margery gestures to the rest of them. "We'd all like to hear what you'd have to say. We have our own opinions on the matter."

They are clever, she thinks. Clever enough to go prodding for a chink in the armor. To bury something deep in the soft parts. They are weapons, made to murder and maim. They are weapons made to protect. Themselves and their families.

Nesta swallows and sets her spoon down. She grabs a napkin and wipes her mouth, buying time and never getting more than a blink.

Nesta wants to give the honest answer, that no, she abhors training. But she also thinks that the honest answer is a little more complicated. Some part of her screams that for once in her life, she should say what she means.

"Sometimes…" They wait for her explanation, the room going quiet and cautious. Nesta rarely has ever had to explain herself. Either someone would've interrupted her by now, or it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest, but there's something about the tension in the room. Quiet, but cautious, and waiting.

"Sometimes," She searches for the words, "I think I'll learn to like it, because I know I need to learn to protect myself…" She shakes her head, squinting far off into some place past this kitchen. She can see one of them roll her eyes, assuming this to be another spiel of propaganda, they've probably heard many times before. That she's heard before.

"But other times, I think, why do I live in a world where I need to protect myself at all, and why is fighting my only protection?" The words rush out of her. She vomits them all over the countertops

"And sometimes I think that me giving into it, is telling them that they have won. That I give up my will because I trust theirs is better when I know it won't change anything.

"But sometimes I think, that maybe I am afraid of it changing me, or me liking it, or fixing me like I know they want it to do. And it makes me angry to think that so little could change me, and it makes me angry that they think I need to be fixed, like I'm some broken toy they've grown tired of looking at, but somehow can't throw away."

She takes a breath, a gleam making a way into her eyes, as she bores a hole into the table.

"but then I think, if I let them do this to me, if I let them have there way for now, and I earn their trust, then later when I want something else, something bigger and bolder, and requires much more… freedom… they'll give it to me." She glances at Margery who looks at her like she is still trying to figure out what game she is playing, what role she takes, and if it was in her best interest to play along. The others are listening intently to every word. Nesta wants to know if they found what they were looking for. "Because, today, I decided to bite my tongue."

Margery smiles at her, just a small tilt of her lips, but Nesta feels like she's been initiated somehow, as if she was given a test and passed it. She points her chin to the bowl of soup.

"Eat up." Nesta can see the steam coming up from the bowl.

"You'll be needing it." Another responds, laughing good-naturedly, a subtle hint of mockery between the words. "If you plan on fighting them all."

Nesta wonders if she's just committed to something she can't follow through with, or something she doesn't truly understand. But before she can contemplate on the direct consequences of her words, the broth hits her tongue. The flavor bursting in her mouth.

There are swirls of beef and cabbage. The bowl of soup cooling as she stares into it. The vegetables float around like little stars in the galaxy. But while the sky always seems cold to her—absent and much too large—the stew is warm as she takes another bite.

It tastes a little like _progress_.

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**I thought a lot about how I perceive Nesta, and I wanted to capture the quietness, the tumultuous emotions, the fact that she's healing and how that's a roller coaster of moods, and maybe her biased narrative, so that's why it's written in chronological pieces of varying degrees of attitude. I also wanted Cassian to not heal her, but be consistently there, talking to her, being supportive, listening, offering what she needs, instead of maybe what he wants to give her. As I think that's probably more accurate to their potential character arcs and my own personal preference of what I want out of their narratives. **

**Also I rhyme… a lot. I don't know how it started and I don't know how to stop so. What can you do. ****Anyways, The next part is the last part so yay! We'll see when that gets posted… (Don't look at me) **

**If you liked and want more: Favorite/Comment, I always like reading what y'all have to say ;D and of course they serve as little reminders to write faster. **


	4. Chapter 4

**Cassian's Love is Warm (3/4)**

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**Summary: **Nesta's recovery in the Illyria and her developing relationship with Cassian… Or the chapter where Nesta communicates a little better and dives more into her magic.****

****Note: I wrote this in present tense, and then I keep wanting to switch it to past. So sorry if there are weird shift changes. To me at the end of the day it's just whatever sounds the best when I read it out loud. **  
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******This took so long and I don't even really know if it was worth it but here you go. ****This is dedicated to those 15 followers who always ask when these chapters will be done and like all my posts about updating this fic. Y'all keep me young…and honest. **

**Thanks for reading! Long asf author's note at the end. **

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Something in the air smells like spring.

Nesta can imagine Elain here, in this field where wildflowers bloom and cold wind tickles her hair. She can see it all so clearly, as if the sun has melted more than the snow—has left more than mud.

Cassian stands behind her, waiting for her to take it all in. She can see the purple tents of the market, the bustling of people. All of them running around with the things to do and accomplish. The presence of life in such a remote piece of the world.

They walk towards that noise, the sweet song beckoning them forward.

It hits her all at once, then. The smell of cinnamon and cardamom, the array of autumnal spices lined in neat rows. Nesta inspects the red and yellow peppers hanging above the counters. Her eyes trailing over pots of hot broth and the bubbling swirls of chocolate and cream, trying to imagine the sweet taste of strawberries coated in crystalized red.

Cassian points to food she's missed along the way and there's something intimate about the way he leans towards her, his hair gently grazing her cheek. He points to his favorite dishes, the color vibrant against the worn brown of the stalls. Nesta wonders if he's noticed she's only half paying attention, caught more by his enthusiasm than the seven different kinds of fried food.

His face grows red when he's excited, she notes. Like spring has a made a home in him, and he too comes alive. He talks with his hands, gestures wildly, at ease in this unfamiliar place. Nesta lets him guide her along, all too aware of the shy smiles he keeps trying to hide between glances.

When Cassian suddenly stops at a stall, Nesta has to catch herself from running into him. She always forgets he is larger than her—larger than life really, but Nesta never notices how tall he is compared to her. A mountain in her way, she thinks, if he had not also been the bridge.

Cassian points to an ornament hanging from one of the railings. A chandelier of blown glass that sways gently. "How about one of these?"

Nesta tries to imagine the house with its bare walls and tattered décor and place the chandelier in the midst of its chaos. She hopes that the picture will appear like paint on a canvas with its cerulean hues against grey. A hint of sky between parted curtains. Forget-me-not shades in forget-it-all concepts. But the image that appears in her mind is her sister's skin smudged in the same blue Nesta looks at, a brush gripped firmly in her hands.

Nesta stares into the clear teardrops.

"Where would we put it?" She asks, trying not to meet his eyes. She notes the stalls across from them and the amount of people drifting from each. Tries to count them one by one in her effort to escape his gaze, questions already forming at the tip of her tongue. How long will they stay here perusing items that have no commonality? How long before the items become unwanted again? Things thrown haphazardly around each room with no purpose but to be pleasant, yet still can't manage even that.

"Maybe, above the dining table…after we get a new dining table." He remarks. "Maybe, the living room." He nods slowly, tapping his finger on his cheek. "I can see it hanging there."

Nesta _can_ see it there. She hates to admit it, but she does.

Such a bright light in all that darkness.

She can imagine them under it, too, with more than enough pillows cushioning them on the couch, pushed to the floor. A thick rug she can feel through her toes, that she can feel on her back. Their shadows tangled by firelight. Her head resting on his shoulder. His fingers trailing along her arms and—

Nesta shakes her head. Her face growing warm.

"We can look at other things, if you don't think—"

"No" Nesta says, breathless and her heart beating much too fast. "It'll work; I think. With the rest of the house I mean."

She scorns herself for sounding flustered, but Cassian simply smiles in confirmation. Mouth wide and endearing.

"We can make it work." He promises, as he signals the shop owner.

Nesta watches as they talk, the muted gestures careful as he hands the chandelier to Cassian. Such craftsmanship in glass. Beauty in something so breakable. She could shatter it before they even made it back home—

Home is not a prison like she thought it was. It is not four walls and a roof, or food or no food at all. It is not poverty or silk sheets. It is not made of glass and it is not so breakable that she could crush it between her palms and bleed on white carpet.

Nesta's not entirely sure what it is, but she knows what it's not. Knows that it is not fragile, and it does not hang, and it is not painted with decorative leaves that fall in shades of blue.

It is not glass.

But maybe it's wood, and the next stall, larger than the last, offers an array of furniture and a female that carves and carves never noticing Nesta as she gleans.

On and on she gathers. She walks to the next stall and then the next and the next, not even sure if Cassian is following or if he stayed behind collecting the light that will hang above them like a glittering star.

It's odd, Nesta thinks as she turns in a sea of unknown faces. She'd spent so much time with her nose raised, she forgot what it was like to stare straight ahead, and… see the world for what it is. Color and wind and sun, and not just walls. A thousand different things she could see, feel, touch… A thousand different things she didn't have to hate—that she didn't have to love either but could choose to anyways. So many choices at the tip of her fingers.

As liberating as that thought is, there's something sad about it still. The world tinted grey, even when the sky is blue.

Even in a crowd of people she is still not where she ought to be. She isn't at the center, while the world spins around her. Nesta is not where the world ends or where it begins or where it continues. She's not even sure if she could see her world if she could fly above it. She is not the part that if removed would eradicate all function, all fluidity.

People move around her, whether she stands in place or walks. They laugh with their friends, talk to their family, to shop owners, mumble to themselves. And as Nesta stands, glancing here and there, a thought enters her head. She is still merely at the edge. Hanging off of it? Maybe not. But she could see her feet dangle. See all the rocks below—

"Are you going to buy anything?" The sharp voice cuts through. Nesta manages a quick glance at the older fairy, unaware that she'd been standing by a shelf of framed mirrors.

"I'm sorry. I was—I'm waiting for someone." She manages, wanting to kick herself for being flustered twice in one day. The female looks pointedly at Cassian who is still talking animatedly with the shop owner.

"Could be a while." She says, and Nesta can't help but agree. "Come in while you wait."

The female moves, lifting the tent flap behind her, revealing a dim, dark space. A hidden place tucked into a corner of the market, larger than the others had been. A tent, Nesta thinks, rather than a stall. With wine-stained cloth enclosing all inside.

Nesta tries not to look to curious at the awaiting female, analyzing every tick of her patient gaze.

"What do you sell here?"

The ominous panels shift, and Nesta wonders if perhaps she asks too many questions. Never trusting the slightest possibility of endangerment, even when it's disguised as shopping and pretty trinkets.

"A great deal of things." The fae answers. "But nothing I can show you if you stay here outside."

Her skin like weathered paper, crinkles as her eyebrows raise in waiting. "There are things you'd like I think."

"How would you know what I like?"

Without so much as a blink, the fae steps inside, her chipper voice carrying behind the tent flaps. "I don't expect you to be so different from anyone else."

It's those words that bury themselves in her, make a home in her, crawl into her skin, until they all but coat her like a new wool sweater.

For as long as Nesta can remember, she is always the one who's different. The smart one, the clever one, the quiet, judgmental one, the mean one, the one with the most hostility. Never the one who played nice with the others, who had many friends that ran to her with secrets and gossip. She was not the one they trusted. Not the one they let in.

But not in this world—she's one of the many in this world. Not one of the few. So, Nesta enters the little shop and wanders.

She walks from one shelf to the next, expects to see marvelous rubies and diamonds with a thousand different colors woven into its shine. Imagines inventions that move when she winds them or talking clocks that sing songs at the end of an hour. Disappointedly, all the shop owner keeps is picture frames.

Nesta stops to stare at a large one, dust covering the worn brass.

A picture of the market appears in its frame, and Nesta blinks at the sudden image. She can make out one of the shopkeepers, children laughing with balloons and candy in their hands. She can even see Cassian in the corner, talking with the fae next door, his hands waving. His head nodding.

"Is it—" Nesta shakes her head in disbelief, "Is it moving?"

The female comes to stand next to her, peering into the image. She smiles, too self-indulgent to be anything but praise and pride. With the glint in her eyes, Nesta almost expects to hear a long-forgotten secret make its way out of her lips. Perhaps where the treasure lies. Or where the golden eggs are hidden. She leans in unconsciously towards her and listens.

"Marvelous, isn't it?"

She points to one on her left. "This one is Monteserre in winter… and this one depicts the stunning shades of blue in the Night Court stars."

Nesta follows her down the row as she continues to describe the various pictures that wink and wave and shudder beyond her control.

"This one is my personal favorite, Spring in Dahlias, I call it."

Nesta looks at the flowers that flutter as if wind has shifted them. She places her hand on the image, her fingers gliding along, expecting to feel soft petals. Nesta only feels the cold glass.

She doesn't try to keep the awe out of her voice.

"How much are they?"

"They are not for sale." At Nesta's furrowed brows, the shop owner explains, a small, conspicuous smile creeping along the edges of her mouth. "I only sell the frames."

Nesta watches as the shop owner maneuvers behind the first image. The market a bustling and lively place that one could dream of and be satisfied with. "Pictures are a kind of magic, I think… and just like hopes and dreams and memories, we see what we want to see. Feel what we want to feel. "

The fairy trails her fingers along the brass, hunching over the top to get a better view. As if she had not made the view herself.

"In many ways I made these because I was trapped in places I didn't want to live in and was myself not someone I wanted to be. They let me escape this world. Even for a moment." The fairy gazes wistfully at the picture, turning towards Nesta. Her eyes a pale shade of green and self-assured promise. "And later when I didn't want to escape anymore, they were memories. Little recollections of times I didn't even consider the magnitude of or how much impact they would have on my life."

The female steps around the image and Nesta feels the sudden urge to run, though she doesn't know why. She is in no danger as far as she's gleaned and even if she were Cassian is only a few stands away. But Her heart thumps regardless, one beat after another, faster and faster, as the shopkeeper continues.

"Hopes, dreams, memories. It's all simple magic, really. Perhaps the only kind we all possess. Past the names we call ourselves, beyond the masks we wear. I think to master it is to master ourselves." She takes a cloth out of her pocket and wipes the edges of the frame. "How else can we see things as they truly are?"

"Why do you keep these hidden?" Nesta asks, her voice soft and accusatory. She could hear the light laughter. Mocking her or believing her to be naïve, Nesta didn't know.

"Because there's some who'd rather not know what they look like when they don't know they're being watched… Others who don't want to know what magic looks like when it's not used for violence or war… No, these are for the special few. Those who think too much already. The ones who need to see."

Nesta shakes her head.

"I don't understand—" She starts, but Cassian appears through the tent flaps, a box placed carefully in his hands

"There you are. I've been looking for you."

He sets the box down gently at his side, combing his hair with his fingers. A carefree, contented kind of way. "I couldn't find you anywhere."

Nesta can feel the urge to roll her eyes but she can't deny that that something about him makes her feel assured. More calm. Less cautious. As if all the words ever spoken make sense somehow, even if she can't decipher what they mean. Even if she can't tell if they're meant to be dangerous.

"I wasn't so far away." A huff in her words. "I was waiting for you, but you took too long."

"Sorry" Cassian answers, a sheepish grin on his face. "The shop owner wanted to talk about the new policies of land ownership in Prythrian, and once he started, he wouldn't stop."

He notices the shopkeeper watching them, an intrigued, curious gleam in her eyes, and nods slightly in her direction, taking his time perusing the items leaning on each wall. A warrior's assessments that Nesta would find odd in such a place if she had not done so herself.

"Did you find anything you like?" He asks, at last.

Nesta maneuvers to the corner, tracing her fingers along one of the frame's edges.

She is not a painter like Feyre. She is not hopeful like Elain. She is not brave like Cassian. She is not useful, or pleasant, or trusting… but something in her heart says that she can have this one thing, if only she'd reach out and take it.

Perhaps, Nesta lies when she says she doesn't want to be like them. Maybe, she's been waiting for them and them for her and got lost somewhere along the way. Somewhere that was messy and monotonous and crass. Maybe she lets herself get carried away, swept up in the lively fire of anger and the grandeur of being unrelenting and unforgiving.

Perhaps it is also true that Nesta is not like them at all. Maybe she is merely trying on different shoes until she finds one that fits the best, until she can walk in those shoes comfortably, stand in front of every person who means anything to her and look each one of them in the eye.

What will she tell them after it's all said and done? What will she see reflected back at her?

"I want to get these frames."

Nesta holds them up for Cassian to see, the brass of one contrasting with the wood of another. She counts three in her palms, but she wants more. She'd take them all home if she could.

"We'll take these." Cassian directs his words to the female waiting, "As many as you have."

He doesn't ask what she's going to do with them. Possibly trusts her enough to know about such things, or maybe he doesn't care at all, Nesta thinks. Maybe Cassian knows she needs this, like he knew she needed all of those books, or the training, or the teasing arguments whenever she was too sad to get out of the house or out of her nightgown. Like all of those games he played with her or the food he set out to have her try. Maybe it was just in his heart to be like that. To be that caring.

Nesta barely notices as the female collects the frames, giving Cassian back his change.

His eyes light up when he's content, she notes. Not quite green, not quite amber. A little bit eager as he looks at her. Nesta wants to know what it means to be looked at like that. If it's as dangerous as she always imagines it would be…

Cassian takes the frames out of her hands, holding them for her as they make there way outside. But not before the shopkeeper grabs a hold of his arm and leans towards him.

She holds her hand next to her mouth as if she is telling some secret, and though the statement she says next is directed at Cassian, Nesta still grasps the words.

They float around like music notes, reach her ears, travel down her spine.

The words curl around her heart, burrow in the center of her chest, warming her all over.

_Your mate is lovely._

_XXXXXXXXX_

The mountains have many different names, she learns, and its acres sprout multi-colored flowers. Enduring patches of delicate petals. She passes wisteria, rhododendron, azalea, feels their softness on the tip of fingers. It's for this reason, Nesta asks to walk some more before they go home.

She spends her time balancing on the raised edge of the sidewalk, Cassian close beside her. Never too far away. Never so distant that she can't make out his shape or smell his scent or feel the warmth he resonates in the early spring chill.

Her hands are clasped behind her, but she feels a little braver, a little more playful and child-like. Not nearly enough to hold her arms out like she wants to and fit the whole world in the length of them. But she does wobble slightly every now and then, just to see Cassian flinch.

"How did you find the market?" Nesta asks as they reach a clearing of muddy rocks and grass.

"I used to come here when I was young. Azriel, Rhys, and I." He shakes his head fondly as he remembers. "We used to spend all day here, eating as much as we could and taking more home."

Nesta waits for him to continue as he passes her, going to sit on the cold ground. His large body at odds with the tiny daisies that sprout in aimless places on the field. She stays behind watching, trying to capture the outline of his figure and every color that bleeds into his skin.

"Actually, I didn't start coming here until Rhys's mom took us. She used to sell dresses here and she'd take us with her sometimes. If we behaved, she said she'd get us each our own surprise. It always ended up being food, but sometimes it was new clothes, or toys, or weapons as we got older."

Nesta can see his fists clump the grass as she gets closer to him, lured by his story and the image of three children running around the market square.

"I don't know why I remember, but I know we used to steal food when no one was watching, even made a game out of it. Who could take the apple from the crabby goblin? Or how many strawberry tarts could we eat behind the dryads back? The one who always raised her nose at us and complained to Rhys's mother to."

Nesta laughs quietly. The sound bright as she pictures a smaller version of him, with rosy cheeks and a penchant for getting in trouble. She wonders if she ever looked that way, too. Innocent and hopeful. Playful and proud.

Nesta wants to say so much to him. Ask him questions about his favorite things, the memories that make his voice sound like he sprinkles sugar atop them. Such sweetness in the light of his smile.

"That sounds fun." Nesta says, cringing at the perfunctory response.

"It was," he agrees. "Until we got home and took turns throwing up everything we ate."

Nesta can't help the grin that appears, and Cassian knocks his shoulders with hers. His smile reaching his eyes as he looks at her, mirth in the crevices of his mouth.

"You have dimples." He notes. Nesta touches her cheeks, covering them with her hands. "I didn't expect you to have them."

The words sink in before Nesta can decipher what they mean, and she spends the next minutes deciding on an answer, worried more about her response than the stillness that tangles around them. She can feel her teeth pull on her bottom lip, begging her not to say anything.

She never says anything.

"My mother didn't like them." Nesta admits, not daring to look at Cassian. "She said that I was born with such a perfect face, it was a pity that the only imperfection she could see was in my smile."

She shakes her head, staring into the wide expanse of interlacing pinks and marigolds. When did she lose the right to laugh so freely, the freedom of being love drunk and a curious daydreamer? When did life decide she was no longer a child and the only thing she could carry were the memories piled so high and so heavy they were crippling?

"I never wanted to smile in front of her, after… I didn't want her to look at me and only see what I lacked—how imperfect I really was to her."

And, Nesta lacked almost everything to her mother. Always talking when she shouldn't, saying things she could never take back. She was always too moody, too angry, too taciturn. Never what her mother wanted her to be.

Even now she reveals too much and Nesta wants to slap a hand over her mouth, rewind time, start at the beginning where her secrets are kept hidden. Safe in the anger she never hid well.

She can see the questions already forming, something Nesta hopes isn't pity making a way in the honey tones of his irises.

"I guess I took her words too literally." Nesta bites, the animosity burning bright red.

Cassian opens his mouth to say something, but Nesta doesn't want to hear it. Doesn't even want to know what he could possibly say to take the bitter taste out of her mouth.

"Why did you stop coming here?" She asks accusingly, amazed that she can switch her emotions, like blowing out a candle. One minute a flickering flame, another smoke rising to the mist.

His brows furrow as his eyes darken. Nesta is almost ashamed that she feels proud to have caused such a look. "You said you used to come here. Why don't you anymore?"

Cassian grimaces, his wings drifting higher. "No, I don't come here often."

His hands wring themselves around and around and Nesta wants to know what he is imagining between his fists. If he hopes to maim as much as she wishes to pummel.

"When she died, I never had the heart to come back. I didn't want to see where she had walked, where she had laughed, the people she knew so well, and not see her in the midst of it all. There was a part in me, a part in all of us, that was already empty. I didn't want to see how empty this place had become—what the world looked like without her. So, I just… stopped coming."

Nesta pauses at his words, suddenly guilty that she is playing a game of whose life turned out worst. There is no winner in daddy issues or absent mothers. No crown for the unwanted, the unclaimed. And she will not find secrets in fingerprints or under the skin her nails dig into. There is only pain.

_His_ and her own.

"Did she come here often?" Nesta asks, her voice steady and soft. His words blinking away the burning sting in her eyes.

"When she could get away—from raising us that is, or some task she had to do for Rhys's father." He scoffs. "Raising us mostly. That was all she good for apparently. Never mind that she was smart as all hell and could rival any male Illyrian, trained or no."

"Do you think she would have been seamstress all her life if she had never mated?"

Nesta doesn't know why she asks more questions, when she all but ruins the conversation. When they get back, she's sure she'll spend hours going over everything she says, marking every tally of moments gone awry. But she wants to salvage as much as she can, wants him to spill the words out so she can collect them like tiny seashells, like parts of a ship already wrecked and abandoned.

Cassian stays silent and Nesta wonders what has trapped him in his head. He stares at the mountains not meeting her gaze and takes his time answering her question. When he does, she can hear the strain of his voice, can see the veins in his hands bulge as he tightens his fists on the grass.

"Illyrians are not… good with females making their own money. They saw, it is as a bad example to the others. No one needed to get ideas, so they gave her more chores, more work. And that was before she had married, so I'm told." He pulls on the daisies between them. The petals falling in clumps as he grits his teeth. "I can imagine what they would have done if she continued."

She can feel the anger from Cassian, and feels it rise up inside her, as well. A pain Nesta supposes she shares with all of them, no matter what body she walks in. Like calls to like, she hears Feyre once say.

To be an Illyrian, fae, or human. To be a female, forever young and beautiful. To be a male, always the strongest and most self-assured. To be nothing, but petals and dust. To have it all. To have so little. It was never enough.

_In that way_, they are the same, she supposes. Both with their feet in the sand, the waves crashing on their ankles. Anger and sadness floating out in that bitter sea she so often drowns in.

Nesta never stops drowning, gives up trying to keep her head above water. She imagines her mouth opening, and a waterfall bursting out. A broken pipe siphoning from an ocean that would never dry. Something explodes out of Nesta. A silence she can no longer keep by holding her lips tightly together.

"My father used to make carvings out of the wood I had to cut," Nesta holds her palms out as example.

She always expects to see the blisters, count them one by one, as some kind of reminder that she's suffered. Sometimes, she wishes they'd appear, so she could rub her fingers across them and trace the memories. But they are long gone, and all she can see now are weaving lines and skin.

"I remember being mad at him, so very angry that he'd use the wood that was supposed to be for fires or…food—" She looks towards the bushes, so full and overflowing with berries. What would she have given to have just a taste then? To have these resources growing just outside her door. "He'd sell them, and I still could only thing that it was mine. He'd use my wood, my time, my pain, and it was my money—what I deserved for dealing with a father who could care less about his own daughters.

"I suppose that's how Feyre felt." Nesta feels her eyes sting as she stares straight ahead, "And I guess that's why I understand."

_The anger_, she thinks. The sour taste of regret.

Cassian stays oddly quiet as she speaks and Nesta can't help but be grateful. She does not need to hear sweet coddles as if she needs sympathy, but equally so Nesta doesn't know what she'd do if she heard criticism. He can't possibly understand something he's never lived through, and it makes a part of her furious to think he'd try. But it also makes a deep sadness fill the center of her chest.

Nesta—never to be understood or her sins forgotten.

He stares up at the mountains and she watches as he closes his eyes, his wings lifting slighting at the breeze. "The only thing I remember of my mother is her voice. I don't remember what color her hair was, how tall she was, even what eye color she had. I can only assume they're like my own…but that isn't good enough. Not really."

Nesta listens carefully to it all.

She's never heard anything about Cassian's biological mother and he's never spoken a word about her, though she often notices how he looks at the others in the camp. The children, the couples, the families he is and will never be a part of. Even sometimes when he looks at her—like he is missing something that nothing in the world can fill.

"I like to imagine that she smelled like the woods, like fresh air… fires…warmth. That she carried me when I was tired and tucked me in when I was sleeping. I liked to imagine that she told me bedtimes stories. I _hoped_ she told me bedtime stories, and I imagined waking up and believing every word that she said the night before. As if she painted my soul, my wants, and my wishes on the edge of my dreams."

Cassian sighs, his shoulders sinking to the ground as Nesta resists the urge to lay a hand there. She is always trying to resist him, shake the feel of him off of her. A lump forms in the back of her throat, and she clenches her fists to stop the reaching.

"All this time, I could hear her call out my name as if she were screaming right in front of me," He croaks. His eyes red as he stares, never quite looking at her. "This year, I could barely remember what she sounded like."

"Why are you telling me this?" She asks, softly, her head resting on her bended knees.

Nesta watches as his grins. His face so obviously despairing that Nesta wants to ask him why he smiles when his heart is broken, why his expression looks so familiar to her. As if she were looking in a mirror as opposed to his war-torn face.

"Maybe all memories fade away, at one point or another. Whether we want them to or not."

Nesta looks away, leaning back and blinking at the sky quickly turning to its dark cerulean hues. An ocean of darkness, she thinks.

_She is always, always drowning._

"Do you miss your mother?" Nesta asks.

Cassian sighs, his hand running through his hair.

"As much as I can miss someone I've never known."

"Do you miss your father?" He questions.

_Does she?_

Sometimes, it's hard to tell. Grief looks so strange in Nesta's eyes, she often wonders if she cares at all.

But she remembers the tombstone she can never visit, the goodbyes that get caught in her throat, the ships she doesn't even want to look at in fear that she would cry and never stop.

_Does she want to miss someone who hurt her so badly?_

"More than I wish I did." Nesta decides.

She looks him over once more before laying down on the grass. The feel of it pillow-soft and cool against her arms. The sky watching over both of them.

"We're both orphans," Nesta remarks.

Cassian chuckles, their shoulders touching as he follows suit. Nesta can feel the heat from his body all the way to her toes. "Penniless, parent-less lot, the two of us."

She stares up at the wide expanse, the stars already peeking through the twilight. The space so substantial and vast it could swallow them whole.

"I suppose we have each other now."

XXXXXXXX

Amren tells her to think of magic as water. To bathe in it, to wash in it, to let it move around her. Nesta never tells her she's afraid to take a bath, afraid of what the water might to do her. Even after she put one foot in and another until her whole body is submerged, she's never wanted to touch that magic she felt just beneath her skin. Never wanted to know just how much it felt like hate.

But, Amren also tells her that if magic is water, her emotions are fire. The more she rages against it, the more she can't control it. The more she hates the magic, the more it burdens her. Her anger breathes through her, and so the magic evaporates before Nesta can see exactly what it's made of and what it calls to.

That's what she tells herself when she stares at the picture frames and nothing appears. Nothing moves and she swears it's because the magic inside of her does what it wants and doesn't care at all about her. How could anything care about something that is so miserable and broken.

She scowls at the offending structures leaning lazily on the wall. The picture frames seeming to hum before her. The one Nesta holds in her hands, with its carved mahogany, glares at her to get on with it.

Nesta supposes it would be easier if she knew what images she wanted to appear. She can think of nothing, though she tries all morning, all last week, and all the way back to Windhaven when they make it back from the market.

Nesta sits back and sighs, her head bumping on the new couch they are still deciding on where to place.

The problem, it seems, is that Nesta can think of no good times worth remembering. She has seldom laughed with unutterable joy at the jokes her friends make. She has no friends. She can't imagine the famous blooming roses of Rask or the briny beaches of Vallahan. She has never been anywhere. She doesn't _want_ to be reminded of Velaris, where she can still smell the putrid scent of puke and whiskey. An image would merely remind her of the headaches she gets with even a whiff of alcohol.

She moves on to people, but she is not inclined to dwell on any of them either. In fact, Nesta doesn't want to think of them at all. And so Nesta sits there, resigning to the belief that she was born to be good at nothing…

Some part of her knows she's scared.

The stiff spine, the wringing hands, the focused gaze. It isn't an enemy that stands before her, but—Nesta inhales—there is too much that hasn't been said.

She doesn't want to know what her mind thinks of when she loosens the reigns. Amren has taught her so many times to keep those shields up, it seems counterintuitive to break them down now. But mostly, Nesta doesn't want to know what magic looks like. She's spent so much time denying it's even there, that the idea of letting it move freely makes her feel wild—her spooked horse-like tendency to see all things as fearful even if they were smaller than her and she could stomp on them easily.

Nesta sets the frame down, the base screeching against the hardwood without leaving a scratch. Her fingers tapping along her thigh to some unnamed melody she can barely recall.

Her powers are always a mystery to her. Never to be understood, never to be forgotten. They are always there. She imagines its depth, the endlessness like drowning in a cauldron, the questions forming in the space between morphing bodies. Human to fae or… something or other.

Nesta tries to silence these questions, but she is simply too curious.

Will the magic shoot out of her hands, follow the sound of her voice, grant her wishes? Will it twist around her spine so that every time she uses it, she'll feel a twinge in her back and a terrible need to bend and crumble? Will it spit fire out of her mouth like those roaring insults meant to bite and hide her away?

Is it hollow like a hole never filled? Does it echo like a rock in a well? Will it squirm? Eating her from the inside out.

Nesta does not want to know, she asserts, does not even want to imagine what the others have called powerful and strange.

But she can name _one_ type of magic.

It was there that day. Between the two of them.

Nesta thinks about the idea of them several times. Even before she ever lives in this cabin. _Long_ before she lets herself think about them together like that. The image always there, always waiting, and _always_ agonizing.

She lets herself dwell on it now for the picture appears.

Maybe not a memory. Maybe not a dream.

In the space between mahogany lines, Nesta traces her fingers along the glass and brings it closer to her. The appearance finer than paint and perhaps more vibrant. She is almost afraid to look at it for long, fearing that it will change into something dark and horrid. But there they lay.

The two of them.

On that hill of vibrant green. The specks of white and yellow dusting their skin. A blanket of beautiful things she'd like to wrap them in, across both of their shoulders where dust and time had settled. This Cassian looks down, a soft grin on his face, pulling his arms around tighter, wrapped around this—this girl who looks a lot like her and nothing like her at all.

This girl grins. A wide and happy smile, her cheeks brimming and a lively red. Nesta watches as the girl in the picture with _her_ hair and _her _eyes, leans her head on his shoulder. Both of them so close and so…loved.

Nesta hates this girl. Immediately chastises this young thing.

This girl who never sees terror or feels the deepest regrets. Who never knows starvation for touch and affection. Who never looks at the world with its hatred and despair and is just so hungry that she eats them like scraps of food left on the dinner table. This girl doesn't know pain—

Nesta breathes deeply. Her fist only inches away from punching the glass into oblivion.

Or maybe she does… Perhaps this girl, this young, naïve, hopeful girl sees it all—feels it all, as she does, but smiles as Nesta always wishes she could, remaining free and unencumbered like no Nesta has ever been before. Perhaps this Nesta knows what it's like to feel the raging disappointment and instead of soaking it up and bottling it for later, she tells stories instead, laughs instead, thrives instead.

Despite the pain. Regardless of the memories.

Nesta does not destroy the image. Whether its some dream manifested or some cosmic joke, the magic is there. Her power is in the center of it all and it is not cruel or angry or crass.

It's water…and if it is, she's made of it. There is no separation between who she is and what the magic makes her. There is no way to pull it out and leave the whole of her behind. As much as she wants to pretend it isn't there, she can more dismiss that it exists than she can claim that air doesn't take space in the atmosphere or that she doesn't dream strange, improbable dreams.

Pretending doesn't equate to truth.

So, Nesta leans the finished, moving frame on the living room wall and picks up another. The lavender paint reminding her strangely of dinner parties.

Nesta makes so many, fills all of the frames of different sizes and shapes and colors with moments she not only remembers, but of those she wishes to see—the pictures she _needs_ to see.

Of Cassian with that group of friends she almost always resents. Of Amren and her, in that tiny apartment with puzzles strewn about. Of the camp and the raging, rising females who lay claim on her and treat her like one of them. Of the stories she swallows and the worlds that swallow her, that she can feel in the pit of her stomach.

Of her sisters. Because she loves them.

More than herself, most days.

She fills the walls with them all. The snow, and city lights, and night stars, and mountain tops filling the backgrounds, quietly saying _hello_, _goodbye_, _stay a while_. _We promise you'll like it here._ _We promise to be good to you._

Nesta straightens each one.

The one of her and Cassian though, she hides. Behind her bookshelf, where it won't taunt her with its hopeful dreams, with its lies it tells so truthfully.

That one can wait.

When the night arrives, Nesta goes to the doorway and the moon scrutinizes her as she waits for the tell-tale sign of wings that signals Cassian's return. It's silvery sheen ordering her to do more this time, than watch from the living room window.

She is not the one trapped behind glass.

His feet hit the pavement as the crack of the open door reveals him. She is not a painter like Feyre, but she counts all the shades of indigo and wine that form the backdrop as he steps towards her. The stars as alive as each person who stares at her from those picture frames and blinks.

He looks at her cautiously, waiting for her response, but she takes his arm instead. Pulling him toward the day's work.

She doesn't ask him what he thinks, what he can read through gazes on his family's faces, but she watches as he scans over the images, taking his time assessing each one.

She swallows when he looks back at her, and Nesta braces for the response. Will he deny her visions, her hopes and her wishes? Will he call her out for moving too fast? Will he knock all of them off the wall and yell?

Worst of all, will he say nothing? Her wants not even worth a response.

Cassian places his hand on her cheek. She feels his thumb trace her skin where it burns and if he moves any lower, he can probably hear her heart thumping wildly. And even if she's scared beyond belief, Nesta still leans into his palm.

She closes her eyes, clenches her fists, and waits for that crippling fear.

Nesta feels the hot press of his mouth instead.

He pulls her to him, his arms moving to her waist as hers wrap around his neck.

His lips are soft, and she leans into him, tastes him, soaks him into her skin. Not at all sure what she should be thinking. Not thinking at all.

But Cassian pulls away far too soon, and when she opens her eyes again, his cheeks are brimming red. Nesta doesn't say anything and neither does he, but she can feel him in the silence. Joy in deep breaths. Warmth she can feel to her toes.

She turns as he does, back to the images on the wall. Their shoulders almost touching as Nesta fiddles with her neckline and Cassian smiles neatly.

The two of them beaming.

The people of their pictures dreaming their own little dreams.

She will not be afraid of memories. She will not be afraid to hope.

* * *

**AN: **

**I**** wanted this part to be a battle for Nesta. Happiness and Sadness are two sides of the same coin, and I wanted Nesta to constantly toss it and I wanted it to be a fight against what she hoped it would land on. I didn't want to write her one day getting over it all, because I don't really think that's true. Healing, after all, is the ugliest part. So, this chapter ends a little hopeful but bittersweet and it will probably remain that way for the rest of it. **

**I split this chapter up, so we have one more part 4/4. And then the last segment which I may or may not ever get to called "Love is Bright Red, Hope is Dark Blue" which is more about the inner circle and their part in all of this. ****Since I think it's easier for Nesta and Cassian to love each other in the dark so to speak and maybe not in front of their family. But, I haven't written any of it, and to be frank, I only sometimes like writing this fic and I want to move past this. So, I will not make any promises. **

**But I hope everyone is doing well. It's an odd time to be alive right now, and I really hope everyone is staying home and staying healthy. Oh btw, I've read Crescent City. It's such a good book! I was amazed but not at all surprised. SJM always writes the books I want to read so there's that. **

**Anyways, thank you for sticking with this fic, I know I take forever to update, but every comment, kudos, like, and reblog mean the world to me and tbh, the constant comments are the only reason I have even made it this far. **

**Of course, if you like this second to last end part, please feel free to do just that! I always love what you guys comment. I'm out! Finally **


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